Talent
by Macx
Summary: Steve had never understood why the others insisted that he could cook. Steve/Tony


TITLE: Talent  
Iron Man (movie), mixed with comic elements  
AUTHOR: Macx  
RATING: mild R for fondling  
DISCLAIMER: None of the characters belong to me, sadly. They are owned by people with a lot more money  
Author's Voice of Warning (aka Author's Note):  
English is not my first language; it's German. This is the best I can do. Any mistakes you find in here, collect them and you might win a prize The spell-checker said everything's okay, but you know how trustworthy those thingies are...  
FEEDBACK: Loved

Steve had never understood why the others insisted that he could cook. Sure, he made the odd breakfast for himself and it didn't burn. He could whip up an omelette and it wouldn't taste like he had drowned it in salt. He had even made salad one time, with garlic bread, while Luke had barbecued so many steaks, they must have made up half a cow.

But he wasn't cooking. Cooking was something that involved recipes and spices and weighing ingredients and timing your oven time or check on the heat of the pan. Steve just threw things together and added some cheese. He was no wizard. He knew survival cooking, and his recipes were in his head.

After a while he started to find out that while he didn't cook in the old fashioned sense – his sense -- he could at least arrange for the whole result to taste good.

Luke was a barbecue man. Give him raw meat, coal, maybe a gas grill, and fire, and he came up with wonderfully delicious results. Anything else was… hazardous to your health. If it so much as looked like a vegetable, it was burned to crisp after a while. Dead. Inedible.

Peter was good with TV dinners. He and the microwave were best friends. He also knew a lot of fast food joints. Wherever they went, he knew the next place for a taco, a burger, fries, onion rings or fish sticks. It was scary all on its own.

Wolverine… ate just about anything, dead or alive. He didn't cook – ever. He simply wolfed down what someone else put on the plate, though he drew the line at vegetarian attempts of dinners or lunches.

Jessica Drew wouldn't touch a spatula with a stick and claimed nothing in the contract she signed with SHIELD said she had to cook, or bake for that matter. She made a mean sandwich, though.

And then there was Tony. Tony was… experimental. It meant he had a whole book full of delivery service numbers and they weren't just the Chinese, Mexican, Japanese and Italian variation. He had some really, really exotic and exclusive places. Sometimes he even hired a cook. Not that anyone protested. The food was good and it beat the mess in the kitchen after Tony's one and only attempt at a breakfast surprise.

It had been a surprise.

It had been surprising that the kitchen still stood. Whatever Tony had planned to serve – he claimed simple bacon and eggs and pancakes – it was spattered everywhere. Steve blamed the thirty-six hours of work that lay behind their resident billionaire genius industrialist engineer. Tony claimed he was fully awake, well-caffeinated, topped off with Red Bull, and he was very well able to handle a simple task like breakfast.

Well, he hadn't. Aunt May had banned him from the general vicinity of the kitchen, which meant Tony installed a high-end, high-tech coffee machine in his work shop, too. Until that moment he had at least come up for the moment it took to refill a thermos of outrageous size.

No, Steve couldn't cook, but compared to his fellow Avengers he was a star-class cook. Tony had once remarked that a ginger-bread house would have better stability with putty, and to bake the walls in a paint pan would double the size. Aunt May had simply shaken her head at his remark about caulking and gone about making a traditional, edible ginger-bread house for a bake sale. Tony had sulked and muttered about how the genius was always beaten down by the ignorant.

Sitting with the waffles he made for himself in the empty kitchen, the house silent and almost deserted around him, Steve read the morning paper. For once he wasn't at the Avengers mansion. He was at Tony's place, a house that couldn't be called a house at all. It had to be some kind of alien spaceship, parked on the rocks at Point Dume. Steve had seen a lot, but he had never seen anything at all like this.

Staying in LA for a few days had been on a whim. The others could take care of routine assignments for a while. Carol Danvers had dropped by and she had almost physically kicked him onto the plane to LA. To spend time with Tony, who had made himself a little rare. Iron Man was there for missions, but Tony Stark was up to his eyebrows in some kind of engineering work or handling Stark Industries matters.

An arm suddenly snaked over his shoulder and Tony rested his head on Steve's other shoulder.

"Smells good," he remarked.

From the sound of Tony's voice, the man was exhausted, hadn't slept in a while, and considering that Steve had arrived yesterday and found him nowhere, that meant he had been up on his feet for at least twenty-four hours. According to Jarvis, Stark hadn't checked into any of his usual haunts either.

"Want some?" Steve offered and turned his head, nose brushing against a stubbly cheek.

Tony wrinkled his nose. "Got coffee?"

"Yes, but not for you. You look like you've been pulling another two-day marathon."

"Make it three." Tony straightened and suppressed a yawn. "You'd be right on target."

Steve scowled. "Bed. Now."

"But, Mo-oooom… You just woke up and there's so much I can think of doing while you're awake…"

Okay, that eyebrow wriggle looked like it needed either more coffee – bad idea – or sleep – better idea. Tony's face was lined with exhaustion and he was way too pale. Of course, if he had to Tony would step in front of the stock-holders and not only present this year's figures, but also next year's outlook for Stark Industries, and then schmooze whoever needed to be schmoozed at some charity event of other – without falling flat on his face or even looking like he was dead on his feet.

Peter had once remarked that it might be Tony Stark's superpower. Steve wondered if there wasn't a grain of truth in there.

Now he rose and drew his lover toward him. "You, me, bed," he offered.

"Oh, now there's a plan!" Tony grinned. He slid a hand under Steve's t-shirt, running a teasing caress over the lower back.

"To sleep," Steve clarified.

"Of course." Tony winked.

"Tony…"

"Steve?"

Steve rolled his eyes and pushed him toward the bedroom.

"Pushy," Stark commented.

"The only way to get you anywhere."

"Now that's really harsh."

But Tony went.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX

They made it to the bedroom, a place Steve had been alone in last night, and as he had thought, the moment Tony's body realized he was a) horizontal and b) in his bed, he shut down.

Completely.

It was almost scary how the man could go from argumentative, combative and what seemed like fully awake to… just a lump on the mattress.

Watching the lines smooth out a little, Steve ran his hand through the longish strands of Tony's hair. Stark made a soft noise and snuggled closer – he would deny he was a snuggler to anyone – and Steve dropped a kiss on the dark hair.

With Tony's arm over his waist and Tony's head buried in his side, Steve picked up the remote and switched on the TV. The light of the giant plasma screen didn't disturb Tony the least. The man could sleep in broad daylight if he had to. Using his head set he softly told Jarvis to plug him into the audio channel.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Tony had slept like the dead and Steve had left the bed after he had watched a movie and then the news. Stark had simply curled up around his pillow, making a soft noise as he did so, and then continued sleeping.

He surfaced an hour after Steve had come back from a leisurely jog and was just checking the latest messages from SHIELD, heading straight for the coffee machine. Steve had learned not to interfere or try maneuvers like saying 'Don't you think you should lay off coffee for the rest of the day?' or 'Take it easy for a while' or the all-time deadly 'How about a morning run to wake you up instead?'.

Well-caffeinated – three mugs and counting up -- Tony joined him on the couch as he clicked through a lot of superfluous emails. Steve glanced at him and wondered how Tony could look so… sexy in sweats, an old, white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, exposing strong forearms, bare-footed, and clutching a mug of coffee like it was his life-blood. Well, it was.

And he looked sexy.

Damn, the man.

The arc reactor glowed underneath the flimsy material of the shirt and Steve felt his fingers twitch to touch it. He had this strange and rather weird sexual fascination with the device. The Extremis hadn't removed it and Tony was still rather self-conscious about this 'flaw'. That he hadn't covered it up any better showed that a) Tony had used the Extremis to check security, b) no one but Steve was around, and c) he wasn't quite awake enough yet.

Dark eyes met Steve's blue ones and Tony smiled lazily.

"What?" he asked. "Do I have something on my nose? Coffee on my shirt? Scrambled egg in my beard?"

Steve chuckled and shook his head. "No."

"Then what are you looking at?"

"You."

The almost sculptured eyebrows rose. "Me?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

Steve shrugged. What was he to say? I want to fuck you into the mattress every time I see the arc reactor? He wasn't into kink. Really. He wasn't. It was just… well… he couldn't describe it.

A hand snaked over his thigh and Tony used the leverage to pull himself up, then made that almost slinky looking maneuver where he ended up in Steve's face in a good way. That he was now only inches from the arc reactor didn't help.

Steve brought up his hands, one against Tony's back, the other pulling down his lover's head to wipe that smirk off his face, he kissed him.

Hard.

Demanding.

And Tony let him take over.

Steve unbuttoned the shirt and drew his mouth away from the tempting lips to trail a wet path down the exposed throat, to the chest and then the arc reactor.

Tony made a noise that was a mix between a groan and a yelp. Steve just grinned and tongued along the seamless merging of flesh and fiberglass.

"Good god, you're a fetishist," Tony managed, then moaned softly as Steve's fingers toyed with a hardening nub.

No, he wasn't. He didn't… well, he wasn't… He loved Tony. He loved everything about him, even this. Especially this. The reminder that Tony had survived against all odds and had come back stronger, Extremis or no Extremis.

Steve looked up into the dilated eyes, mirroring the same arousal he felt.

The huge floor-to-ceiling windows suddenly turned opaque, though the light didn't grow any less bright. The plasma TV that had displayed the inbox of the Avengers email turned dark.

Steve raised his brows.

Tony grinned.

Now if that wasn't a hint.

"Jarvis?" Steve murmured as he nuzzled against the other man's neck.

"Hmmm… you think he's voyeuristic?"

"Who knows? You programmed him…"

It got him a breathy laugh, mostly because Steve had started on a special hot spot.

"Yeah, right… he would, probably, watch… I mean… he's programmed to…ah…Steve, damn, yes… learn!"

Steve smirked himself now and turned his attention back to Tony's chest while cupping his very nice ass. Tony's hands were clenching into his shoulders, a clear sign he was doing it perfectly right.

"We never did it in the kitchen," Tony managed, sounding more and more bothered.

"Because I promised Pepper."

"She'd never….yes!... know… Steve!"

Rogers had managed to get Tony onto the couch by now, kneeling over the other man. Tony's shirt was open, exposing the slender man's chest, and the sweat pants only hung onto the narrow hips because of the cord. That was quickly dealt with. Tony had thrown his arms over his head, stretched out, looking debauched and wanton.

"Next time," Steve only growled, not about to move from here.

"I'll remind you," came the sly reply.

Then even that grin was wiped off Tony's face as Steve Rogers set about to prove to Tony Stark that the kitchen was a stupid idea and the couch was all they needed.


End file.
